Great Park farm sprouts salads

What would look like a small farm to anyone else is seen as the world’s largest fresh salad bar to Erik Cutter, director of Alegria Fresh. For OC Produce’s A.G. Kawamura, it’s the future of agricultural urbanism.

On a half-acre at the Orange County Great Park, Cutter has installed rows of vertical planters bursting with beets, lettuce and strawberries and horizontal crops of basil, herbs, peppers and more all fed by a solar-powered hydroponic pump system. The 40 plants filling each vertical stand are “fat and happy” on 90 percent less water than it takes a typical field planting, he said. No pesticides are used.

Cutter calls it the “ultimate grazing ground” or an interactive urban farm that had been in the Laguna canyons until he moved it to the park at a cost of about $150,000, not counting his own time.

“What if this became the great supermarket at the Great Park?” he asks.

Cutter’s vision for the farm and his partnership with OC Produce, one of the region’s largest commercial growers that leases about 100 acres at the Great Park, is to be a fresh-food destination for some of the thousands of residents soon to live nearby. They could bicycle to one of several fresh produce stands open everyday selling tomatoes fresh from the vine and lettuce just plucked from the soil, or in his farm’s case, ground-up coconut, he said. Cutter said he wants to bring school groups from areas less accustomed to fresh foods and have them eat a salad made from fresh-picked produce.

OC Produce’s Kawamura already has been selling his freshly harvested produce, with help from Cutter, to local eateries including restaurants at Pelican Hill, Lucca in Irvine and James Ulcickas of Bluewater Grill who once bought hundreds of cases of heirloom tomatoes that would have otherwise been overripe by the time they reached store shelves or a market.

Ulcickas said he added them to the crab sandwich, to the salads and more. He paid four times more than he would have for a hot-house tomato, but it was worth it to make a better meal, he said.

“We want to create a legacy and a platform for what 21st century agriculture is like,” Kawamura said of his company’s presence at the park.

Loma Linda University wants to use the produce in its cafeteria. “Healing through food” is what Cutter and others gathered at the farm for a tour Thursday called it.

But before that happens, he hopes to at least encourage more farming at the park, offer workshops and sell his farming systems -- $120 for one of his six-stack vertical tower -- to residents looking for a backyard or side-yard solution.

And Decathlon-goers this weekend may spot salads being sold in a small farm stand across from a row of food trucks that feature produce raised nearby not far from where teams of university students have built solar-powered homes, many with their sustainable and vertical gardens outside.

Cutter studied biochemistry and oncology but ultimately turned to business – starting an automotive design firm and a company that marketed luxury real estate around the world, all the while growing fresh produce in vertical farm at his home in Laguna Beach.

Three years ago, the recession prompted him to choose a new professional path and so he focused on growing.

Ultimately, he said he wants people to eat fresh food whether it’s organic, not, commercially grown or in a person’s backyard.

“If you can taste the difference, you remember the difference,” he said.

Those interested in buying their own vertical planters or finding out about the company’s upcoming plans, including workshops, should visit the website AlegriaFresh.com.